According to Wikipedia (I know terrible source but...), a "grace period" is a time past the deadline for an obligation during which a late penalty that would have been imposed is waived.
In other words, it is a time you or someone else allows you to mess up without consequences.
I think my grace periods for myself have become longer and for others shorter. I am not a fan of this new tendency of mine.
For example, this semester I have been LATE to everything. I blow it off like it is no big deal and say that I am living in polychronic time so all of the monochronic people need to just deal with it or become more culturally enlightened.
WHAT?!?!
That is not what I believe at my core. I believe we are supposed to love people how they want to be loved and interact within the bounds of the society we are in.
In other words, I need to give myself less of a grace period and get my butt in gear. Being late does not speak highly of my character in Western society. Perhaps my discontentment of Western society leads me to rebel by pretending I was in a Latin country and being late all the time.
Whereas, I do want to treat people more important than the tasks at hand. I need to realize that I need to take my own advice and operate in a way that my culture (now matter how much I dislike it) values.
So therefore I need to decrease myself, and extend that grace to other people because that is what Christ would do.
-Beth
